Don't Look Down Read online

  Nothing.

  Fucking Althea. She was making him jumpy.

  Unless Pepper was right and there was a ghost.

  He watched for a minute more and then was putting the pistol away when he heard something moving in the brush. He went to one knee, bringing the pistol up, and waited, perfectly still.

  The noise came again and he saw a palmetto frond move about thirty feet to his left front, very close to the swamp. Wilder moved now, fast, toward the target, zigzagging, the pistol leading. Five feet short of the frond he came to an abrupt halt as he saw the cause of the noise and movement.

  A nine-foot alligator had also come to a complete halt, hearing his approach. Its large left paw was frozen in midair, its nose toward the swamp, but the large head slowly swung toward Wilder and fixed him with its black eyes-check that-eye. The gator's left eye was missing, a scar running through thick scales above and below where it was supposed to be. The mouth was half open, revealing the large teeth.

  Wilder nodded and took a tentative step backward. Then another. The gator still hadn't moved. Another step.

  The gator moved fast, surprisingly fast, straight for the swamp. It disappeared in the foliage, and then seconds later Wilder heard it hit the water. He shook his head and headed back to the camp. Just before exiting the woods, he slid the Glock back into the holster and covered it with his shirt. Last thing he needed was Althea seeing him with a gun again-

  He heard a car take the corner too fast and then Bryce zoomed up in a black Porsche Carrera and skidded to a halt in front of him.

  "My man," Bryce said as he got out of the car and slapped the hood. "Like it?"

  Wilder nodded, not sure what proper car etiquette was. He was used to guys for whom a mean ride was a sixty-ton Abrams tank with a 120-millimeter main gun that was ride-stabilized and could put a round on target over two miles away while moving at sixty miles an hour.

  "I'm heading into town," Bryce continued. "Want to come? Between me and the car, we will get laid."

  Right, Wilder thought. One of his ex-wives had told him that cars like Bryce's always made her want to yell, "Sorry about your penis." He'd thought it was mean, but she might have had a point.

  Still, getting away from the set seemed like a good idea; it was too damn full of unknowns, worse than the swamp, which just had one-eyed gators. He looked over at the parking lot and spotted Stephanie the assistant coming out of Armstrong's beat-up camper looking bitchy again. Which meant Armstrong probably wasn't happy, either.

  "J.T.?"

  Good time for a retreat. "Sure. Let's go now."

  Bryce smiled. "Cool. Let me just touch base with Althea, and we'll be out of here. Last free night before we get into the big stunts."

  "Althea?"

  Bryce rolled his eyes. "You know how girlfriends are, always wanting to know where you are. You gotta keep them happy."

  "Girlfriends?" Oh, shit. "I thought you and the makeup girl, Mary-"

  "Well, yeah," Bryce said with his trademark cocky grin. "But Althea doesn't know about that."

  "Right." Wrong. This was not good. Not good at all.

  "I always say, what people don't know can't hurt them," Bryce said cheerfully.

  "Good point." Wilder considered backing into the swamp so Althea wouldn't see him and say, "Great lay last night." Plus there was Armstrong, who probably would not be happy if he was upsetting her star. Not good at all. It'd be a lot safer to run into the gator again. It had shown better sense than anyone he'd met here.

  "You ready?" Bryce said, jerking his head toward the camp.

  "Uh, sure." Well, how bad could it be? He'd been shot at by experts. What were a couple of angry women?

  He thought of Armstrong biting into that apple and hesitated.

  "J.T.? You sure you want to go?" Bryce sounded uncertain, as if afraid his new best friend didn't want to play.

  Imagine how he'd sound if he found out his new best friend had screwed his girl. Fuck.

  "Right behind you," Wilder said. Way behind you. Cover me, I'm going in.

  Then he followed Bryce into the camp, wishing he were back at Bragg, where there were damn few women and no movie people.

  Lucy had driven back to base camp with Pepper singing "Us Amazonians" again, riding shotgun with her loot. She'd parked the camper in the lot and Stephanie had opened the side door, stuck her head in, and said, "We're at the Wildlife Refuge today, starting with Rip and Annie driving and then arguing in the car."

  "Good." Lucy unlocked the driver's seat and swiveled it around so that it faced the dinette. "Now come in here and explain to me why this movie was a Harry-Met-Sally romantic comedy about a stockbroker and a bank teller and then suddenly at the end Brad is a former Navy SEAL and there are helicopters and exploding armored cars."

  Stephanie looked around and then climbed into the camper, narrowly missing a collision with Pepper, who was heading for the bed in the back to spread out her stuff. Stephanie sat down and lowered her voice. "Finnegan paid Lawton, the old director, to tack on the rewrite and the extra stunts even though they have nothing to do with the real movie." She leaned forward. "It's so wrong, Lucy. It was an honest love story when I wrote it. Then Lawton let Finnegan change the perfect movie into a guns-and-bombs mess."

  Lucy blinked at her. "You wrote it? I thought Lawton wrote it."

  Stephanie swallowed. "I met him when he taught a screenwriting course in my film school. He said he could get my script made if he put his name on it-"

  "Oh, hell," Lucy said, feeling sorry for her for the first time.

  Stephanie shrugged. "It worked. It was getting made." Her face grew dark again. "And then he hooked up with Finnegan and did this to it."

  Lucy almost reached out and patted her hand. "Well, you did a good job," she said instead. "Except for all this stunt stuff at the end, it's really well written."

  Stephanie flushed. "Thank you. But that's not the point. The point is that the characters are violated by that change." She looked at Lucy, her heart in her eyes. "Don't shoot the stunts, Lucy, they'll ruin my film."

  Lucy blinked her surprise. "I have to. There's a contract, Stephanie. I have no choice."

  "But they're awful," Stephanie said, her voice rising in a wail. "They're ruining my script."

  "I know," Lucy said, patiently. "But I have this contract…"

  Stephanie's face grew hard again. "I hoped you had principles. Connor thinks you're the best, he says so all the time." She shook her head. "I should have known better. You make dog food commercials. Of course you'd sell out."

  "Actually, I was sold out," Lucy said, but Stephanie was already getting up to go, her chair swiveling behind her.

  She stopped in the doorway. "Daisy said this was your big break, but you don't care at all."

  "It's not my big break" Lucy said. "I like working with animals. I like dog food commercials. "

  "Sure you do," Stephanie said and went out, slamming the camper door behind her.

  Oh, hell. Lucy called to Pepper, "I'm going to go check on Althea, but I'll come get you when the shuttle's here."

  "I'm going to stay in base camp today," Pepper called back. "I want to see if Estelle in wardrobe can make my WonderWear fit better. Do you need me to bring you apples?"

  "No, no, I'll be fine," Lucy said, thinking, Thank God, a day without apples. She went back and kissed Pepper goodbye, getting a hug for her pains, and then left the camper and headed for Althea's trailer.

  Halfway across the lot, she ran into Gloom.

  "Tell me something good," she said, and he slung his arm around her shoulders and gestured to the lot.

  "You are now the mistress of all you survey," he said expansively.

  Lucy looked at the beat-up trailers and dingy foliage. "How is that good?"

  "The crew has decided you're the real deal," Gloom said. "Morale is improving. Bryce thinks you're terrific."

  "And what does Captain Wilder think?" Lucy said before she could stop herself.